An Artist's Circle

I was perhaps an accidental artist, growing up alienated with a slightly abusive mother and a dad working long hours and going to night school, themselves the children of dairy farmers, my childhood era the turmoil of senseless violence of the sixties, my environment stuck in fifties philosophy, a tarnished Pleasantville.

Yet the house was filled with books, the library was down the street, and inexpensive books were available from catalogs the teachers gave us in class. I took refuge here, eventually also in mathematics (I liked the logical aspects and the challenge of theoretical math) and increasingly in music. From music, the path I decided to follow, I learned a good deal about what the music addressed, including time periods, cultures, philosophies, literature, dance, opera—anything that might make me a better musician—learning FAR more than in school or college.

Most of all, I learned to identify myself as an artist—one who strove to see the world in terms of ideas, particularly fresh views of that world, challenging entrenched, outdated, unuseful thought patterns. “I was sent into the world to rattle cages,” I sometimes explained—my view of the artist as a young man, my way of dealing with a confusing world in my search for purpose and identity.

Thirty years later, I seem to have circled back. My family is scattered and some members won’t even speak to each other. I feel alienated at work, my classroom successes—new approaches, students winning awards for their writing and so forth—are met with polite praise and official criticism, as I’m viewed more as a threat than an asset, indicated by the degree of nitpicking necessary to respond to my endeavors (which remain otherwise successful). I’m irritated and angry, despondent and discouraged. What a waste of energy.

So, I find myself back to rattling cages, back to letting go of what others think, back to seeing the world as freshly as I can, and back to living in my own mental compartment, perhaps symbolized by my cave of an office, or by my home located far out in the country by myself.

Ironic, I suppose (or maybe this has just been building): I sat down to consider how to approach my Intro to Fiction class in this next unit. We’ve just finished “Dubliners”—essentially the story of Joyce’s journey from artistic/alienated adolescent in ”Araby” to his cosmic self-realization(s) at the end of “The Dead”—and his next work? “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” (one of the books I read on my own as a student). Then I started to read the next work, Hesse’s “Magister Ludi,” and I had my own epiphany.

As the “biographer” described the history of the novel’s Glass Bead Game, I remembered why I chose to read this work too as a student, and I know what I’ll teach the class to get them into the novel. As the narrator describes, I’ll show them what’s so special about Bach, Mozart, and Renaissance masters, how Joyce parallels music, how music and mathematics are richly intertwined, how great a role math plays in Renaissance painting and architecture, how Ancient Greece saw music as also geometry and astronomy, how this started the university system, and how Ancient China governed the use of music as essential to the health of the state—and why.

And then the role of contemplation. How everything is a symbol. And just what do we DO with this knowledge after we attain it?

For better or for worse, the artist is back, attitude and all. It’s simply who and what I am, and I refuse to be "a creature driven and derided by vanity."

Writer

Hardening of the Categories

Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. As the principal bassoonist, that certainly gives me lots of work to do, especially when "full time musician" hasn’t been my day job for quite a while. However, as this piece is one of the stalwarts of the bassoon canon, all those hours in the practice room over all those years kick in, even the subtlest and strictest of points. This is my turf, where I belong.

Or not. The second bassoonist is bored, sloppy, without nuance (or the ability to play anything resembling soft). The musicians are talking incessantly, socializing instead of paying attention to this challenging piece. Regional orchestras lack funds, so we have just three rehearsals to put together this performance. Time’s a-wasting, but this apparently bothers no one else—performing well isn’t the point for many of them. Nor, it seems, for the conductor.

Anderson Consulting once had an ad featuring a lion with its paw on a ball of yarn: “Are your skills being underused?” This seems a common occurence; we belong and not, so we (and our abilities) are accepted and not. I teach at my college because of my work, and my students respond best when I’m straightforward, but I can easily get into trouble if I’m not careful to hold back—and that restraint handcuffs the work. [Colleges like to see themselves as bastions for free, critical thinking, but really they want you to do that original thinking within the guidelines of the traditional thinking.] I live in the country because I love it, even raising lumber, fruit, nuts and berries on my land (I grew up with farming), but I also have to balance this with living in a very conservative, small town where living in the country means riding ATVs/snowmobiles and driving pickups, not hiking, cross-country skiing and driving a Toyota Yaris. And at the end of the Tchaikovsky rehearsal, the concert master walked outside, took one glance at a strikingly beautiful crescent/planet conjunction and said “Oh, look at the moon,” immediately looked away, went to his car and drove off—the same moon I stared at for several minutes.

I’ve always been struck by this curious mix of interests, abilities, and accomplishments. People determined to act become musicians. Serious musicians become famous actors—and district attorneys and writing professors. A steamboat captain becomes a major author, even drawing his pen name from his previous profession—Mark Twain. The movie adaptation of Twain’s "Roughing It" ends with “Life is what happens when you’re doing something else” (which several web sites attribute to John Lennon—take your pick). Indeed.

Yet, instead of appreciating the richness of our many talents, we like to specialize. A cardiologist who prescribes medication with constipation as a side effect walks away—another doctor must prescribe the needed laxative. And academics distain “jacks of all trades,” ignoring that this describes the most interesting, successful people in field after field—renaissance people. Absolutely, specialization is useful, important, and often necessary. But we embrace it to the exclusion of all else, allowing us to put everyone in the appropriate box with the appropriate label—hardening of the categories.

Years ago, one reporter noted that retailers had trouble deciding where to put Paul Winter’s albums—the jazz bin? New Age? World Music? Paul Winter responded, “I don’t care where they put them, as long as people can find them.”

If you’re looking for me, I’ll be hanging out with Paul.

Writer